


the faithful and the flightless

by ladymedraut



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Thor: The Dark World Compliant, a neglected one at least, sort of an abandoned work, well basically compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymedraut/pseuds/ladymedraut
Summary: In which Loki and Sigyn, in separate prisons on opposite sides of the Yggdrasil, somehow manage to find each other again thanks to the Convergence.Originally posted on fanfiction.net many, many years ago, but moved over here when I found some unposted additions. Essentially abandoned at this point, but who knows. Maybe I'll continue to update sporadically every few years.
Relationships: Loki/Sigyn (Marvel)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. loyalty lost

Life in prison was… _boring._ There was nothing to do but skim through books he had already read a thousand times and think about how different his future could have been, if not for the Allfather’s lies. There was nothing to see but the plain white walls of his cell and the darkened corridor beyond. There was nothing to hear but his own mind, screaming about his confinement in silence, although he kept his outward appearance as cold and collected as ever.

Once upon a time, Loki had been able to sit in the same spot for hours, so long as he had a book. The words had been enough to satisfy him, to give wings to his imagination and let it take flight, allowing him to live vicariously through the tales of Asgard’s ancient heroes until that day when he could have real adventures of his own.

But now was different. He’d _had_ adventures. He had seen all Nine Realms and traveled farther than most of Asgard’s inhabitants could even dream of. He had fallen through the starry branches of the Yggdrasil and risen again, stronger than ever. He had held power, true power, in his hands. He had almost been a king. And now… Now he was expected to resign himself to a life behind bars? A life in prison, never again able to speak to his mother, or see his brother, or ride to another realm, or feel starlight on his skin, or play tricks, or run, or hide…

That was no life at all.

How could he endure months, years, _centuries_ of this? He would go mad—at least, madder than they already thought he was. Yet the strange thing was, he didn’t feel mad. Reckless, maybe, and angry, but those weren’t really the same thing. And, more than anything else, he simply felt empty. Odin had disowned him (not that he cared), Frigga was forbidden to see him (of course), Thor had left him to rot in the dungeons (which didn’t surprise him), and _she_ was in a different dungeon, one darker and deeper than his own.

Was this how she had felt, all those long years of her imprisonment? He could imagine her pacing back and forth along the rough stone walls of her cell, wearing the soles off of her boots, then continuing to pace until the bottoms of her feet were torn and bloody. She would twist her head and pull back her teeth to scent a wind that no longer blew, like a wild animal trapped in a cage, but she would never speak, never raise her voice. It was not her way to curse and shout—she was silent, like a ghost yet living.

Loki was stretched out on his cot which, while it was small and thin, was probably more comfortable than whatever bed the Allfather had given her. They treated him well enough in Asgard, if only because of Frigga. His cell was neat and clean, his clothes were washed on a regular basis, and his food was decently prepared. He certainly didn’t lack for reading material. It could have been worse, much worse.

He grabbed the cup of water off his bedside table and drained it in one quick swallow, then proceeded to toss it over his head, catching it effortlessly as it tumbled back down again. Toss… and catch. Toss… and catch. Toss… He sighed, wondering what the sky looked like. He thought it was afternoon, but he had lost track of time days ago. Catching the goblet, he flicked it upwards again. What book to read today? Maybe that one over in the corner, but it was small, maybe a few hundred pages at most. He’d be done with it in less than an hour. The goblet fell back down again. After spinning it around in his fingers, he threw it once more, looking for a different option.

A sound came from further in the dungeon, but Loki ignored it. There was always someone grunting, or screaming, or crying, or trying to kill his inmate. At least Loki had a cell to himself.

_Probably because no one would want to share one with me,_ he thought with a wry grimace, trapping the goblet and batting it away again. There was only one person in the Nine Realms he would even remotely consider being imprisoned for eternity with, and the Allfather had already jailed her somewhere even Loki could not go.

The sound came again, but this time it was different. It was a shattering, a crackling, like the breaking of glass… or a forcefield. A forcefield like the ones that sealed the cells.

A jailbreak. That was something new.

With a lazy, almost nonchalant air, Loki caught the goblet and set it back down on the table, then slowly stretched and rose to his feet. Folding his arms, he strode over to the window forcefield of his own cell and leaned up against the wall. Sure enough, something was happening further down the corridor. Guards were yelling and running, prisoners were banging on the walls, somewhere more forcefields were being destroyed…

Well, good luck to whoever was trying to escape. People had tried to break out of Asgard’s dungeons before, and they had never succeeded. They were captured, brought before the Allfather’s throne, and thrown into the Empty Realms—deserted, lifeless pockets of existence between the worlds. The Empty Realms were anomalies, things that should not technically exist at all. They opened once and closed forever, not even accessible by the Bifrost. You were thrown into the nearest of these realms, the cosmos shifted, the realm was sealed, and you were stranded there for eternity.

Better to rot in Asgard, where at least there were books and the chance of seeing Frigga, than to spend eternity in an Empty Realm. Unless, of course, it was the same Empty Realm _she_ had been thrown into.

Loki turned his back on the skirmish raging through the dungeon and slumped down against his cell wall, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his head on his knees. What use was it trying to escape? Where would he go? What would he do? The Nine Realms didn’t want him—none of them did. Jotunheim had cast him out long ago, Asgard held no promise of a future, Midgard would not bow before him… Did he really think Vanaheim would take him? Or Alfheim? Or even Nidavellir or Svartalfheim? Niflheim belonged to the dead, which for all the hopelessness of his situation he was not yet willing to join, and Muspelheim was a world of fire, no place for a frost giant…

His hand trailed listlessly along the floor, feeling the smooth white tile. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t tile beneath his fingertips. It was the battered leather cover of a book. A small, worn, water-damaged book.

Maybe reading would help him block out the flashes of light beyond his cell. He scooped up the thin manuscript and flipped it open to a random page, not even bothering to glance at the title, and began to read.

_Loyalty… What a useless thing. The servant is loyal to the king, but does the king return his faith? When there’s money to be gotten, or lands to be conquered, does it bother the king what price the servant pays? The son is loyal to the father, but what does the father care? He lies with every breath he takes, leaving his son to fend for himself in the cruel world, so long as_ he _prospers. The lady is loyal to her lord, but what happens when he goes off to war? He leaves her behind without a second thought to sit and sew and weave, while he sees the worlds._

_What is the good of loyalty if it has only one side? Would it not be easier to make no commitments, take no vows, swear no oaths? If people do not listen to the voice in their heads, what’s the point of having a conscience in the first place?_

_I tried to be loyal. I tried to keep my faith, I really did. But the worlds are fallen and darkness risen, and look where loyalty got me. A pit of a cell in an empty world, forever in darkness, forever in silence, with only my thoughts to keep me company._

Loki skimmed through the rest of the book, his brows furrowing in confusion. Why would Frigga give him a book like this? All the others were about magic, or adventure, or history…

He flipped to the front cover, but the leather was smooth and blank, declaring neither a title nor the identity of the author. So he turned to the first page instead, only to find that that had no words either.

_Useless,_ he thought, about to throw the book across the cell and go back to watching the guards running back and forth through the dungeons, when something caught his eye.

Thin grey lines were tracing their way across the paper, spreading out from where his thumb rested on the tattered vellum page. They ran like water, dancing and leaping, twining together until they formed a simple passage of runes:

_Identity confirmed: Loki Laufeyson._

Okay, books weren’t supposed to do that. The words were supposed to already be written, not magically appear out of thin air. And they weren’t supposed to know his name either. He was on the verge of throwing it away again, this time wary that it was some new scheme of Odin’s to trick him into confessing his crimes, but then the runes melted back into fluid grey lines.

He watched, hypnotized, oblivious to the fighting taking place mere feet away from him. Pictures began to form—a galloping horse, dancing feet, stars sparkling in the night sky, hands touching, a feather tumbling slowly downwards…

Then they resolved themselves into words once again.

_Hello, love._


	2. two prisoners, two realms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continuing with old stuff that was previously posted elsewhere...

_Hello, love._

Two words. Two words were all it took to make his heart leap into his throat. The runes were scrawling themselves across the page faster now, keeping time with his racing pulse.

_I_ _sn’t prison boring? At least you, I presume, are in Asgard instead of locked in some puny bubble world barely larger than the Allfather’s throne room. And_ you _can still see people—all I’ve seen for two years are stones and stars._

_Ach, we’ll compare prison stories later. Mine will be worse, don’t bother trying to outdo them._

_Now, you’ll be wondering what this is, won’t you? Even_ you’ve _never seen a book like this one before. I’ve enchanted it so that this message will appear only with your touch, and after activation it’ll link you directly to my diary. Whatever I write, you can see. I call it a mirror-book. I’m pretty sure that I invented it. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how you can write back yet, so for once in your life you’re just going to have to shut up and listen to me._

_The Convergence is coming, when all Nine Realms will align. From what I can see of the stars from here, my realm is orbiting Svartalfheim, and I’m counting on the fact that it’s going to be pulled into the Convergence along with the inhabited realms. When the walls between the worlds fall apart, I_ should _be able to escape, but I’m going to need an anchor. The walls separating an Empty Realm will never disappear completely, not even with the Convergence—I’m going to have to use my power to tear them down, and to do that I’m going to need someone on the other side who I can latch onto so I don’t end up falling into empty space._

_In other words, be on Svartalfheim in two days’ time. With the walls thinning, I’ll be able to find you there._

_See you soon._

The grey lines stood still for a moment, almost vibrating with intensity, then collapsed together in the middle of the page to form an imprint of her lips. They parted slightly, almost as though she was blowing him a kiss, and then vanished completely.

“Sigyn,” he whispered, running his hand over the vellum in disbelief, wondering if he had imagined the whole thing. But then he picked up his hand and looked at his thumb, and there was a swirling grey mark where the strange ink had rubbed off on his finger. “I’m coming, Sig.”

Two days wasn’t much time to find a way to escape from Asgard, not when he was under constant supervision and the Allfather was just waiting for him to make a prison break—

A prison break.

Like the one that was happening at that very moment.

Loki tucked the mirror-book into his shirt, right next to his heart, and rose slowly to his feet, struggling to keep his expression neutral. It would not do to look too excited, too suspicious…

He needn’t have bothered. The only guards left in dungeons were either corpses on the floor or a few ragged survivors struggling against the mass of ex-prisoners trying to force their way out up the main stairway.

Where was the one who had started this, the prisoner who had shattered the first forcefield? Perhaps he had already gone by Loki’s cell, but something told the god of mischief that was not the case.

The thud of a giant’s footsteps drew his attention from the flashes of light and screams of dying men at the end of the tunnel. But this was no familiar giant that strode into his view, with blue skin and bright red eyes. In fact, this was no giant at all. It was a monster out of nightmare, a massive warrior in a tusked, bestial helm with skin that seemed more fire than flesh, who was unperturbed by the swords biting into his armor and cared not whether the person he killed was an Asgardian or a fellow prisoner.

The helmeted face turned to stare at Loki, the depthless eye sockets searching the god of mischief’s gaze for… for _something._

It was impossible. Loki recognized that power emanating from the monster in black waves of energy, that molten lava look of his skin, that strangely terrifying helmet—but only from books. The Dark Elves had been defeated, slaughtered, they and the order of the Kursed were no more…

And yet, here was one of the Kursed standing before him, seemingly offering him an escape from his prison. Was this the answer to how he was supposed to get to Svartalfheim in time for the Convergence? Help the monster get out of Asgard? Could it really be so simple?

Frigga’s old warning echoed in his mind. _Don’t make a deal with a Dark Elf_ , she had always told him, even though she had not yet been born when that race had been vanquished. They were vile, untrustworthy creatures, interested in only darkness and destruction… To make a deal with them was to court death.

Loki stared at the Kursed elf, debating whether or not he should follow Frigga’s advice, but in the end it was the Dark Elf who made the decision for him when it turned away from Loki’s cell and continuing on towards the main dungeon entrance where the fighting was thickest. The god of mischief was going to have to find another way to get to Svartalfheim.

“If I were you, I’d take the stairs to left,” Loki called out to the monster, smirking as it followed his advice. He cared not whether the thing that had once been an elf made it out of Asgard alive, but the longer it was on the loose and occupying the guards, the longer he had to figure out his own plan of escape.

The citadel would be in turmoil now, what with the inmates and guards battling through the dungeons and the Kursed elf trying to flee Asgard. Of course, when he heard that the prisoners had broken out, the Allfather would immediately assume Loki had been responsible. Maybe it would be better to wait, at least a few hours, before starting his own breakout. Once Odin had seen that Loki wasn’t responsible for this newest catastrophe, once he realized there was a Kursed elf running loose in the citadel, _then_ the god of mischief would make his move. But how to escape, when Asgard would be on high alert? It would be easier to wait until events had died down and the guards became lax, thinking he was resigned to his fate, but he did not have the luxury of time. If he didn’t get to Svartalfheim in two days’ time, Sigyn would be lost forever, and he would truly have nothing to live for anymore.

Leaning up against the side of his cell, Loki pulled out Sigyn’s mirror-book. She always had the best plans, simple and straightforward. Perhaps she had left him some word of advice.

He opened up to the last page and read the only word written there.

_Brother._

“Really, Sig?” he hissed, slamming the book shut. “That’s your brilliant plan?”

Loki would never ask Thor for his help. He would rather rot in prison than beg his adopted brother to set him free. Besides, Thor had abandoned him, left him alone in the dungeons without so much as a word. It had been weeks since his imprisonment, and not once had his one-time brother come to visit him. The last time Loki had seen Thor, it had been when he dragged him back to Asgard in chains.

At their parting, when Thor had handed him over to the guards, he had said not a word. He hated Loki for what he had done in New York—for Coulson’s murder—and Loki could not blame him for that. But at the same time, hadn’t there been the glimmer of a tear in his brother’s eye when Loki was marched off to prison? Or had he just imagined it? Could it possibly be that Thor still had feelings for his adopted brother, even after all he had done?

What if Loki were to fake illness, or even death? Would Thor demand to see him? Maybe then he could manipulate the oaf into smuggling him out of the dungeons, so that he could see the stars “one last time.” Thor had enough honor that he couldn’t refuse Loki’s “dying wish,” and from there it should be fairly simple to delude him and make for Svartalfheim. After all, the secret passage was in the mountains surrounding the citadel…

Loki smiled to himself, his first real smile in years. “Oh yes, Sigyn, I’m coming.”

* * *

Somewhere beyond the known realms, in a world that consisted of a single rocky canyon and not much else, a figure stirred in the shadows. Years of eternal darkness, broken only by the faint glow of starlight, had bleached her skin whiter than bone and leeched all the color from her once-blond hair. Grey eyes that used to look so pale in her face now seemed impossibly dark by comparison. The woman jokingly called Asgard’s Ghost in her youth had become a ghost in truth.

A thin hand reached for the book on the ground that was finally glowing with soft green light and tucked it into the tattered remains of her dress. She loped to the front of the cave, the thick callouses on her soles preventing her feet from feeling the sharp rocks beneath them, and gazed out at her small world.

At the bottom of the canyon wound the silver ribbon of a river, her only source of water, while above her head towered the rough canyon walls. To the east and the west, the stars glimmered in the voids where her world simply stopped, the rocks vanishing into thin air. There were no trees, no plants, no animals, nothing but stone and starlight…

“Soon,” Sigyn whispered to the sky, her voice cracking from disuse. “I’m coming, Loki.”


	3. how loyalty fell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here it is, the extra chapter i found buried under a bunch of other half-written things... sorry this will probably never be finished, but there are several other projects i'm working on at the moment...

_Loyalty. Constancy. Devotion._ The words chased themselves around and around in Sigyn’s head, threatening to drive her mad.

A strangled laugh gurgled from her cracked lips. _Loyalty. Constancy. Devotion._ Her blessing, her burden, her curse. She was the goddess of fidelity, but what had that ever done for her? Only gotten her locked up in her own private hell.

No, no it was not her power’s fault that she was here… Sigyn’s lips curled back over teeth that had been sharpened to razor-like points. Odin, the Allfather, had thrown her into this pit of a world. And Thor and Frigga and Sif and Fandral and Hogan and Volstagg—they had all stood by and said nothing.

The memory of that night still haunted her dreams, both waking and sleeping. She pressed her eyelids together and clamped her hands over her face, blocking out the faint rays of starlight that lit her Empty Realm but doing nothing to stop the scene replaying itself in her head.

_Loki is dead,_ Odin had told her in the throne room, in front of the entire population of Asgard, his single eye void of all emotion. _Thor has returned, and Asgard is safe._

And then they—those spineless, gut-licking fools who called themselves gods—had proceeded to feast. Loki, their prince, had fallen from the Bifrost, and yet Sigyn was the only one who mourned. Something dark had begun to stir in the pit of her stomach then, something that snarled and growled for justice.

Then Odin had the audacity to tell her to join the feast, to celebrate the death of her beloved alongside the rest of those brainless idiots. _This is not the end of your world, Sigyn. Find a new focus for your loyalty._ The Allfather said it like it was the easiest thing in the Nine Realms, but he did not understand. No one understood.

She had chosen to be loyal to Loki, the boy who taught her magic, the man who had loved her, the prince who had treated her as his equal. The rest of Asgard had looked down upon her, the orphan foundling who the Healers had taken pity on and accepted into their order, but Loki had never looked at her the way they did, like she was some sort of impostor. He was the one who had recognized the potential for magic within her, he was the one who had trained her in the darkest hours of the night, _he_ was the one who had first named her Goddess of Fidelity.

If Loki had truly died that night, she would have _known._ There was a shadow over her heart, a shadow that flickered and danced with his quicksilver moods but always, _always_ pointed her way back to his side. And that fateful night, her heart-compass had shown her where Loki lay—somewhere out there amongst the stars, beyond the branches of the Yggdrasil, and _alive._

_Accept that he is gone, and move on._

Something inside Sigyn had snapped at Odin’s words. Loki had told her about his true parentage, about the Allfather’s lies and schemes, and it seemed to Sigyn in that moment that the King of Asgard was more the monster than her jötunn prince.

_Faithless,_ she had spit in his face, dark fires welling underneath her skin. _You have broken faith with the ideals you hold so dear—honor, justice, loyalty. Do those words mean nothing to you now?_

His lined, ancient face had hardened into stone as Hugin and Munin swept down to perch on his shoulders, their beady black eyes boring into her like twin omens of doom. _How dare you speak to me in such a manner? The one who protected you, who took you in when you had nothing, who raised you from the rabble?_

She had turned on him then. It did not matter that he was the Allfather, the King of Asgard. He was an oath-breaker, and she was the Goddess of Loyalty, the Keeper of Oaths. It was her duty to rebuke him…

_Oathbreaker_ , she had spat in his face, a strange power simmering in her veins. She had no words to describe the force that had gripped her then. It was like waves closing in over her head as she flailed helplessly in water of unknown depths, like flames racing over her skin as she stepped into the heart of a scorching wildfire, like wind rushing past her face as she spread her wings and _soared._

There had been fear in the Allfather’s eye when she reached out to touch him, dull grey mist spiraling out from underneath her fingernails. For the first and only time, she had seen him visibly shaken, and victory sang its sweet paean in her heart. She did not know what would happen when she touched him, but she knew that he would be punished as her power saw fit.

But her smoking hand had never touched him. He had struck her on the side of the face with his spear, then called for his guards and had her thrown into the dungeons with mist still curling around her fingers and her eyes still blazing with hatred. The forcefields had shimmered into being, trapping her in a sterile white box deep beneath the citadel of Asgard without so much as a blanket or a book.

She had thought life couldn’t get much worse from there.

She had been very, very wrong.

* * *

“Frigga is dead.”

_Frigga is dead._

The guard’s words echoed through the empty caverns of Loki’s heart. _Frigga is dead._ Not “your mother,” not “the queen,” just “Frigga.” He wasn’t quite sure why that bothered him so much, but then again he wasn’t quite sure of anything in that moment.

How could she be dead? The woman who had raised him, who had been mother and teacher and friend to him? She was… she was… Indestructible? Eternal? No, nothing could live forever, not even the gods, he knew that— _he knew that_ —but Frigga… She had visited him in his cell—well, not her, exactly, but a projection of her—and she had talked to him, tried to reason with him, but he had shut her out and pushed her away…

_Am I not your mother?_ Those words haunted him almost as much as the guard’s. Her last words to him.

Loki nodded curtly to the guard still standing outside his cell and let Sigyn’s mirrorbook slip from his fingers. Words flickered across the open pages, and his eyes skimmed across them without comprehension. 

_Find me in the forgotten places, where the sun no longer knows how to shine. Search for me in the silent places, where the only wind is the breeze of memory. Look for me in the lonely places, where other souls no longer stray. Look for me, search for me, find me, for I know you shall always come back to me. Your loyalty commands you, leads you, brings you home._

_I'm sorry, I'm rambling. Loki? I miss you._

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on fanfiction.net a very long time ago (like 2013, I think?), recently rediscovered going through some old folders. I really only use this account now, so figured I ought to move this over here in case the urge to update it again ever strikes...


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